Ubuntu-One client/syncd cause 10 wake ups / second each

Thanks for filing this bug report. I'm sorry but I don't quite understand what the issue is. Can you provide a little more description?

The issue is that ubuntuone-client, ubuntuone-syncdaemon and desktopcouch-server (forgot to mention that) are responsible for a constant rate of 30 wakeups/second between them (10 wakeups/s each). On a reasonable modern system this is not a negliigible figure, in particular when considering the impact on the power consumption of laptops.

The question is why these services cause wakeups at all. Is there some kind of polling to check if there is any work to do? And doing so 10 times per second?

Jens, everything that uses glib from Python is affected this way.

This bug over at Gnome bugzilla describes it.
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=481569

That was fixed in late October,
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=481569#c82

so it should fall in to Lucid soon, when python-gobject source package is updated. That will automatically fix this bug.

The ubuntu package has patches for this issues for several cycles now, are you sure it's the same issue?

the change has been added in intrepid

"pygobject (2.15.1-0ubuntu2) intrepid; urgency=low

  * New patch, 61_wakeupfd-fctnl-and-read, merge back parts of patch
    61_wakeupfd-fix (named "Do not use the wakeup fd if it not initialised" in
    GNOME #481569) which still apply (setting the read end of the pipe() as
    non-blocking and actually reading bytes from it); LP: #250876;
    GNOME #481569.
  * Refresh patch 03_maintainer_mode.

 -- Loic Minier < <email address hidden>> Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:28:02 +0200"

The last (hopefully!) fix of pygobject was released in 2.21

Still an issue. This is the polling done in one second, maybe it can be reduced:

poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}], 7, 101) = 0 (Timeout)
gettimeofday({1270731240, 60992}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 61204}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 61369}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 61542}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 61702}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}], 7, 100) = 0 (Timeout)
gettimeofday({1270731240, 162262}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 162419}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}], 7, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
gettimeofday({1270731240, 162818}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 162983}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 163152}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 163309}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}], 7, 100) = 0 (Timeout)
gettimeofday({1270731240, 263799}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 263958}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}], 7, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
gettimeofday({1270731240, 264359}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 264524}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 264692}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 264851}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}], 7, 100) = 0 (Timeout)
gettimeofday({1270731240, 365413}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 365572}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}], 7, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
gettimeofday({1270731240, 365975}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 366141}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 366314}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 366471}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}], 7, 100) = 0 (Timeout)
gettimeofday({1270731240, 467034}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 467192}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN}], 7, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
gettimeofday({1270731240, 467589}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 467725}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 467884}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1270731240, 468008}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=6, events=POLLIN}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POL...

In Maverick (current as of writing this) ubuntuone-syncd and ubuntu-sso-login are still doing 10 wakeups per second each.

This also applies in Natty (beta).
This could be the same issue:
 https://bugs.launchpad.net/twisted/+bug/571648

Disabling statistics gathering in desktopcouch's couchdb significantly reduced wakeups.

marked as fixed. tested on 13.04